Paper to be Read on Friday Afternoon, 26th April
Experiments in the Edhlaction and WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SOME OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE
- Author:
Thomas A. Newsone,
Administrator, Besford Court.
The title of this paper may give rise to the erroneous impression that Besford Court deals only with the educationally retarded and not with the mentally defective child. Although the Report of the Joint Committee rightly declares the unity of the educational problems of these two classes of children, the mere fact that the majority of the Cental ratios or intelligence quotients of patients at Besford Court falls within the range of from 50 to 70 indicates that it deals primarily with the genuine mental defective and not merely with the educationally retarded child.
A small institution for mental defectives should not be conducted ?n the ” menagerie principle.” If it is to do efficient work, it must limit itself to receiving patients whose mental defect falls within a certain definite range. Consequently, the small institution must have a policy?a policy of inclusion, and still more of exclusion. The ex- perience of those connected with such an institution is therefore limited. Moreover, experience at Besford Court is restricted entirely to boys. The notes that follow are based upon a number of years’ experience at that institution, and, though our work extends over a period of twelve years, much of that time has been taken up by a process of development, with the result that the present organisation bears very small resemblance to the organisation, methods and aims in the early days. Consequently, there is nothing in this paper in the nature of a generalisation, and whatever is said is said in order to invite the critic- ism of those who have a knowledge of the intricacies and difficulties of the work gathered from experiences of greater value and extent. The writer proposes to give an account of three experiments which have been tried at Besford Court, beginning with the first?our adop- tion some four years ago of the Montessori method of educating young mental defectives in the three Rs.
In previous days one was inclined to ask whether the teaching of the three R’s to children obviously unfitted by nature for these educa- tional accomplishments was a worth whilework. Inthemiddleages,men and women without any academic learning whatever, managed to earn good livelihoods, married, maintained homes and brought up children. Even to-day, as most of us know from older men and women whom we have met, illiteracy does not mean social and industrial inefficiency. The three R’s are therefore not essential elements of education or of culture. It is possible for a man to be highly cultured and highly efficient without being able to read or write, or even to calculate except in the simple way of savages.
It is doubtful, therefore, whether education in the three R’s, given with the ordinary school routine, is really helpful to the child whose intelligence quotient hovers roundabout or is lower than fifty, and whether the substitution of extended manual training and the use of cinematograph films, story telling, the radio, with varied and pleasant occupations would not be far more beneficial. The happy child is the developing child.
Since our policy at Besford Court is to get a defective back sooner or later into the community as a stable and more or less self-supporting person, the question of the value of elementary scholastic education calls for an unhesitating and affirmative answer. In the first place, the average I.Q. of children who can be trained in this way (given the intensive and unbroken training of a residential institution) is much higher than that of the other class who must be looked after for life either in their own homes or in some colony or custodial home. At the best, trained defectives who rejoin ordinary social life have the life- long disadvantage of their mental defect, and in whatever way they endeavour to earn a living, a lack of any educational accomplishments will add very serious handicaps. In a semi-skilled operation a work- man must be able to measure and to make a simple calculation If he cannot read, he must depend entirely upon verbal instructions. His memory, which is generally unreliable, must be called upon to do work which the normal person is relieved of by making notes. By the in- ability to read, a means of continuous and progressive education en- joyed by others is entirely lost.
But even with higher grade mentally defective children, whom it is hoped later to place in the community, it was found that the process of education in the three R’s, relieved by school manual work and possibly some very sketchy manual training, required all the boy’s available time until he reached the age of sixteen. It seemed essential that real training in vocational manual work should begin if possible at thirteen, at the latest at fourteen, and that in order to do this some short cut was necessary which would enable the total time spent in scholastic work to be shortened. The Montessori method of education seemed to offer the solution, with the added advantage that it required very little ancillary manual work such as raffia work, etc., as by con- stantly handling the various pieces of apparatus the same result is obtained.
The difficulty, therefore, is this. In the case of the lower grade children who will remain for life in a colony, education in the three R’s is labour and money thrown away. In the case of higher grade children to whom it is proposed to teach a useful trade and return them to the community, the teaching of the three R’s absorbs most of the time essentially required for the teaching of a trade. The Report of the Joint Committee very wisely states: ?
Below what mental age it is waste of time teaching children to read and write is a debateable question. Many children are taught writing far more for the pleasure it gives their parents to receive a copied letter from them than for any use they will ever make of it themselves, and there is little doubt that even yet far too much time is wasted at this. Hardly a single child who has a mental age below seven when he leaves school learns enough reading to make any use of it after- wards.”
The answer to the question may possibly be found in the dis- tinction already given.
Four years ago, with much hesitation and a perfectly open mind, the Junior Department in which boys from seven to twelve years of age are being educated, was transformed into a Montessori school. A corresponding transformation at once became apparent in the spirit of the Department. The note of enthusiasm and cheery optimism became dominant. The children became animated by a real zeal for work. They resented long holidays, inasmuch as they interfered with the interesting games they were playing in school. School work had become a recreation to them. Their powers of concentration grew rapidly. These are only statements, though of facts, but the success of the experiment can now be shown scientifically. The mental ratios (or I.Q.’s) and other ratios of each boy in the Junior Department are determined with very great care and, since in many cases the results have been checked and confirmed by independent visiting psycho- logists, our figures may be taken as accurate.
Thanks to the courtesy of Professor Cyril Burt, who kindly supplied us with figures relating to London Special Schools in which the Montessori method is not used, the following graph has been com- piled which illustrates the superiority of the Montessori system over others. A notable feature is the straightening out of the dotted line relating to Besford cases after the introduction of this system, thus in- dicating approximately equal proficiency in all educational subjects.
Graph comparingtheprogress made by6ochildrenatthe Junior Department of the Besford Court Mental Welfare Hospital for Children after the introduction of the Montessori System with that made by 93 children of the London Special Schools in which the Montessori System is not used.
Besford Court results are shown by the dotted lines, London ones by the solid lines.
The London figures have been kindly supplied by Prof. Cyril Burt. It should be noted that these ratios indicate rates of progression and are almost independent of natural age. The reading ratio (e.g.) reading age ascertained by standardized test x 100 natural age.
For the purpose of ascertaining the mental ratios, Professor Burt’s Revision of the Binet-Simon tests was used in all cases. The range of natural ages of the two sets of children is approximately the same, viz.. 8?13 years.
It will be noted that London children in their second year at the Special School show results that are distinctly superior to those shown by Besford children when tested in May, 1925, i.e., before the introduction of the Montessori System. On the other hand, after the introduction at Besford of the Montessori System, final results at .Besford arc vastly superior to those obtained in London. Moreover, the top dotted line is almost a straight one indicating that the Besford children are being trained equally well in all subjects.
It will be noted that London children in their second year at the Special School show results that are distinctly superior to those shown by Besford children when tested in May, 1925, i.e., before the introduction of the Montessori System. On the other hand, after the introduction at Besford of the Montessori System, final results at .Besford are vastly superior to those obtained in London. Moreover, the top dotted line is almost a straight one indicating that the Besford children are being trained equally well in all subjects.
Graph showing the progress made by 60 children at the Junior Department of the Besford Court Mental Welfare Hospital for Children, since the opening of that Department.
The Reading, Arithmetic and other Ratios in the above graph are obtained by multiplying the Reading Age, Arithmetical Age, Mental Age and other ages, ascer- tained by “the application of Standardized Educational and Mental Tests indicated in the headings, by 100 and dividing by the Chronological Age. The Achievement Ratio, i.e. the percentage of Actual Attainments indicated by Educational Age compared with inborn capacity, as indicated by the Mental Age, is obtained by calculating the percentage ratio:
Educational Age x 100 Mental Age Two important modifications of the original Montessori system have been made at Besford Court, but in these respects we seem to have anticipated the mind of Dr Montessori herself. These modifications relate to the training of ” group consciousness ” and the relative, not absolute, principle of ” free choice of subjects.” While Dr Montessori practically ignored group work in her earlier publications, in the last course she held in London in 1927, she laid considerable stress on the importance of it. The following is an illustration of its advantages: ? Before the introduction of group work in reading, the average reading ration of children of the Montessori department at Besford Court was 59 per cent. This ration rose, after its introduction, to as high as 65 per cent. Again, free choice of subjects must be confined to things the child knows. The child may choose any subject to work at, but he must take his own “stage” of the subject, not “pick at random.” This insures that every child is ” working at his own pace ” and at a ” stage ” that he understands and in which he, consequently, will be interested.
The general effects of special school training are to raise the educational ratio until it approaches closely to the mental ratio, and to raise the latter slightly?in other words, to raise what modern American psychologists have termed the Achievement Ratio, Educational Age x 100 Mental Age until it approximates to 100 per cent. The appended graph shows that the employment, at Besford Court, of the Montessori system has raised the average Achievement Ratio of boys of the Montessori Depart- ment from 79 (seventy-nine) to as high as 98 per cent. That is to say, their actual educational attainment reaches as high as 98 per cent, of native ability.
While fully appreciating the importance of devising special methods, such as the Montessori, for training those who arc capable of being trained in reading, writing and simple arithmetic who arc in- capable of being so trained by ordinary elementary school methods, the writer is of opinion that there is a marked tendency to regard such training as the beginning and end of the education of the mentally defective child. It seems to him that, consciously or unconsciously, this fallacy appears to be the basis of many of the remarks contained in the Joint Report on the subject of the school leaving age of special schools.* The salient feature of the Besford Court system is that such :!:The residential special school is the child of the day special school just as the day special school was the child of the elementary day school. The family resem- blance is strongly marked. May we not all be suffering in varying degrees from the elementary school complex?
training is held to form merely the foundation?although a very essential foundation?for the real training of the higher grade men- tally defective child. It must be remembered that, however proficient he may have been rendered by one or other of these special methods in ordinary school subjects, he is still as mentally defective, in the true sense of the word, as he was before; and, if he is to compete successfully in the labour market with his normal fellows, his mental defect must be compensated for by intensive training in some special form of craft. For this purpose the elementary general manual training commonly given in special schools is quite inadequate.
The Residential Special School should have an aim totally differ- ent from that of the Custodial Home. In the latter case, economy of working is a matter of first importance. In the former, the education and training of the patients to become self-supporting members of the outside community is the primary object to which even finance must be subservient. This costs money, and if the cost cannot be afforded, the attempt should not be made.
In a Custodial Home, one expects to find the shoe-makers’ shop Wlth its master shoe-maker and M.D. assistants, and the tailors’ shop and the gardening department run on similar lines. The principle is that every member of this little community must be made the utmost use of in the measure of his gifts, his health, and happiness. But the Report of the Joint Committee speaks of these occupations as being suitable for training defectives to earn their living later in ordinary life in these trades.
The writer has grave doubts regarding the wisdom of two of these recommendations. To-day most shoes are factory made. There are niany wholesale firms engaged in boot repairs. The ordinary jobbing shoe-maker has, as a rule, not a growing trade and if there is, in town or country, any shadow of a demand for the assistance of mental defectives, it will be on the ground that sweated labour assists a dvins industry.
The mentally defective boy is not, physiologically, a healthy boy. His organs may be sound but he is notoriously liable to sepsis from the slightest cut. This indicates that his co-efficient of immunity against disease is far lower than that of the average normal. Tailoring is an unhealthy trade. The warm and often foetid atmosphere of the work- room and the posture assumed are well-known predisposing causes of pulmonary tuberculosis, to which statistics show tailors are especially liable.
Obviously, the Joint Committee has recommended these trades, not on reasoned gounds, but because they have been impressed by their almost universal occurrence in Residential Special Schools. But this is not because they are a suitable training for ordinary life, but because they keep the maintenance costs down.
It is remarked in the same paragraph of the Joint Report (page 56) of the mentally defective boy that “if the necessary facilities for training obtain, other trades may be open to him, such as brick-laying, metal work, or even painting.” When the writer visited Waverley,U.S.A.,Dr. Fernald pointed out to him that, after most of the boys had been allocated to trades, the residue were put into the painting class, where they generally did well. The Joint Report would seem to have the trades in the reverse order. It should read?” Painting, metal work, and even brick-laying and carpentry.” That is our ex- perience at Besford.
Doubtless, many will think that it is quite impossible to train mentally defective boys to be as proficient at any form of craft as the normal workman. While perfectly prepared for failure it was deter- mined, at Besford Court, to make the attempt. This was our second experiment. The results obtained have been as surprising as they have been gratifying. Not only have the boys of the Senior, vocational, department of Besford Court entirely by themselves (although under the supervision of specially picked instructors), built a brick bungalow, now inhabited, and the new Domestic Block, and restored and ex- tended buildings on the estate, but they are at the present time engaged in building their own Manual Training School, to the entire satisfaction of the architect. The following tabular statement indicates the average mental ratio (or intelligence quotient) of boys of the various vocational classes: ?*
Average mental Nature of Vocational Class ratio of class Skilled Carpentry … … … … 65 Bricklayers … … … … … 63 Plumbers … … … … … 60 Gardeners … … … … … 56 Rural Handicrafters, excluding “trial cases” … 53 *Painters … … … … … 51 *These trades have been ranked in order of their difficulty by the Chief Manual Instructor, who did not know the Mental Ratio of any of the boys until several months afterwards.
*It required much tact and diplomacy to explain to the Instructor in Painting why boys with the lowest I.Q.’s were sent to his class, It may be noted that all of these vocational classes are connected with the building trade and have been carefully chosen as affording the means of gaining a livelihood, whether the boy resides, after dis- charge from the institution, in town or country. The term ” rural handicrafters ” requires some explanation. Boys in this class are taught rough carpentry, such as the making of gates, fences and wheelbarrows, rough bricklaying, ordinary painting and the preparing of sash cords, glazing windows and the replacing ?f tiles on a roof. Thus, in addition to forming a training suited to those whose grade of intelligence is insufficient to render them capable of being trained in the more highly skilled forms of craft, it constitutes a ” trial class ” in which the form of craft for which those of higher grades of intelligence are found to possess special aptitude may be determined. These constitute the ” trial cases ” alluded to above.
As a final preparation for these vocational classes, boys of the Montessori department spend their final term learning to calculate with- out the aid of any form of apparatus. Up to the age of sixteen, boys in the Senior Department spend half their time in school perfecting their ordinary education and half their time in one or other of the special vocational classes. From the age of sixteen until such time as they are fit for discharge as competent workmen?usually about the age of twenty to twenty-one?the whole of their time is spent in vocational training.
The supreme danger in a Mental Welfare Hospital or Residential Special School is that the individual is apt, unless special precautions are taken, to become lost in the group. The Residential Special School rnust not be an educational tank in which all sorts of cases are let loose until the time arrives, at the age of sixteen, for individuals to be fished out and returned to their parents. Each patient is sent there for special study and special treatment, simply because each patient has special needs. Just as there is no uniform hospital treatment for physical dis- orders so, in the same way, there is no general educational treatment for psychological defects. Normal individuals vary in their mental and emotional make-up. Mental defectives vary enormously and treatment must vary with the needs of the patient. To take a simple example?a special faculty may become exhausted so far as capacity for its develop- ment is concerned. Under a general formula of education, such a patient would be wasting time, building up an inferiority complex and suffering from prolonged irritation by attempting what nature has decided to be impossible. To attempt to teach such a child that par- ticular subject would be as useful as trying to teach a giraffe to climb a tree. Again, a faculty which, up to the moment, has been larval, may suddenly begin to develop?for instance, at the age of puberty. Under group treatment this fact would be unknown. It must also be remembered that, in nearly every mental defective, there are certain character defects and certain character disorders. These defects in some are innate?in others they are acquired. The treat- ment of the two classes of defect is very different. The origin of the defect must be discovered before treatment can be given scientifically. Take, for instance, the simple example of a boy who suffers from outbreaks of bad conduct. These are symptoms, and mere treatment of symptoms is not only useless, but is liable to cause intensification and fixation of the cause, and may lead later to a complete breakdown of the character.
The causes of the same kind of misconduct may be many. The bad conduct of a boy may arise from Narcissism?a boy is self-centred and morbidly self-interested and is therefore determined, at any cost, to focus attention on himself: or his bad conduct may be the result of a strong inferiority complex compensating itself intermittently, by various outbreaks and thus adjusting the balance of self-pride: or it may be an anti-social grudge expressing itself from time to time: or it may be caused by the sudden release of an accumulation of energy too great for the boy’s power of self-control: or it may be a reaction against too strong routine or an environment which is pressing too harshly: or it may have a physical basis?it may be due to a vitamin or a fat deficiency.
Now in a Residential Special School these outbursts will not be noted down on the discredit side of the boy’s character report, but welcomed as indications that something is wrong somewhere and must be dis- covered, and, if possible, put right. The boy will be regarded as a patient and not as a culprit.
The work of a Child Guidance Clinic and that of a Residential Special School are consequently closely connected, yet quite different in their scope. The former works under very great difficulties. Even when full and accurate reports of the doctor, the teacher, the social worker and the psychologist are laid before the psychiatrist, who has already made his own study of the case, he is working at a great dis- advantage. In the first place, he has studied the child under abnormal circumstances. Even at the best only an accurate cross section study of the case has been made. The treatment now presents difficulties. It is rarely impossible to change entirely the environment which has been at fault. Generally it can only be slightly modified. The real causa- tion of the child’s character defect, which has now become so grave as to call for treatment, may be in the parents themselves. It can rarely be possible to re-educate parents in a clinic. This calls for humility and intelligence on their part, both of which will often be conspicuously lacking.
All these unfavourable circumstances vanish when we consider the Residential Special School. The child is no longer injured by its en- vironment, because the environment here has been scientifically created to meet the needs of the child. He is no longer mishandled by those responsible for his care and home life because he is in the charge of teachers and nurses who are specially trained for the work. He is no longer the object of a brief intensive study. He can now be studied for weeks and months under all possible circumstances, in all his moods and from every angle. In addition, not only can a more complete and possibly more accurate cross section study be obtained, but also, what is of deeper importance, a longitudinal study can be made.
Thus, the Residential Special School is to the Child Guidance Clinic as the well-conducted hospital is to the specialist’s consulting room. The mental welfare doctor should, tiierefore, know with certainty when he recommends the case to be sent to the Residential Special School that all his findings will be verified or corrected by those com- petent to do so, and that his advice, if his diagnosis proves to be correct, will be scientifically carried out.
It follows, therefore, that Residential Special Schools have com- mitted to their care a very large number of cases of extraordinary interest; and as it is only in such places that these cases can adequately be studied, in every Residential Special School research work should be carried out and the results placed at the disposal of all those who are concerned in this work.
In order to achieve this, two things are necessary: ? (1) A very full and detailed dossier or case book should carefully be built up for each patient, and among other things which will be mentioned later, this case book should contain regular and fairly frequent reports on the child from every department. (2) From time to time, in rotation, or at once in a case of emer- gency, these reports should be studied at staff conferences, fully discussed and the decisions recorded on which action is to be taken. It may, perhaps, be helpful to describe the present routine at Besford Court. At the beginning of each term (there being three terms to the year), the alphabetical list is divided up between the weeks, and all departments are warned of the dates when reports will be required from them. First of all, there is the medical routine examination.
The stripped boy is first examined by the medical officer who has before him at the same time the boy’s medical card and a complete medical history of the case, together with any queries that arise. Weight graphs, based upon the monthly weighings are also among the exhibits. Reports are made of any special treatment, orthopaedic, ultra violet, medicinal or dietetic, which may have been indicated; and the observed results are also given. If there have been any reports of anti-social behaviour, or the like, these are also offered for consideration. The supervisor of remedial exercises and the nurses are present throughout these exam- inations. As only eight boys are examined during two hours, the medical examination is exhaustive and thorough. A shorthand writer takes down from the medical officer his observations and remarks. Physical defects are scrutinised with special care, progress or the reverse noted from measurements, and finally instructions given if a boy is to be referred to one of the honorary specialists. The nutrition formula, as devised by Professor Pirquet, and introduced to Besford by Dr Auden, is determined.
The medical examination having been completed, the reports from the other departments are handed in. A new questionnaire is given to each department each term. These reports come in from the Prefect of Studies, the Prefect of Discipline, the Chief Manual Instruct- or, the Refectory Master, the Bursar, the Senior Scout Master, and the Nurse.
Before the case is ready for the conference much work has to be done. Each report must be considered in connection with all other current reports; and in connection with all its predecessors from the same department. From all these materials, a thesis on the boy is con- structed. Special attention is paid to the contradictions which often exist between one report and another and such conflicting observations (which are really different aspects of the boy reacting differently to different external stimuli), generally prove to be the means by which a deeper knowledge of the boy is obtained. The object of the thesis is to ” get the boy on paper,” and to provide a theory as to his emotional and psychical make-up. It should explain all the facts that have been recorded. The thesis is purposely given a dogmatic tone in order that it may provoke, if necessary, contradictions from members of the staff. As a rule, the discussion on a case lasts about half an hour, though some have been known to last two and even more hours, and cases have been even adjourned in order that they may be presented to our hon- orary psychiatrist, Dr Auden. The thesis and the ensuing decisions are added to the boy’s dossier.
Two general remarks may now be made. The first is that we have found it almost invariably to be the rule that where boys suffer from conduct disorders, the first gleams of hope and indications of im- provements in character are to be found in the report of the Chief Manual Instructor. This points to the close association of conduct dis- order with the inferiority complex. In the vocational trade the boy is doing something with real success; and at the end of his work can look at something concrete which he knows to be of use and which he him- ir 1 1 selr has produced. On page 64 of the Report of the Joint Committee an important observation will be found : ?
A very large proportion of the school work is manual work and if there is one principle which is never lost sight of, at all events in the best institutions, it is that all work must be for a definite object. No one realises more quickly than a defective child the folly of being asked to do work which will be of no use when it ls finished. Most teachers have realised that it is essential that all the manual work shall be either for use in the school or institution, or for sale. Practice work ls waste work, and has a bad moral effect on the children.”
The second fact which we have observed and which impresses us more and more with its importance is that bad behaviour is also closely associated with physical ill health. There may be no organic defect, but the boy is obviously not at his best. For this difficulty we have groped for a solution, fairly frequently with happy results. In some cases the plan has been adopted of sleeping the boy in the open air throughout the whole year. Our mercury vapour lamps have helped us considerably in other cases, in spite of what has been said by the Medical Research Council. But there are a number of cases which still present us with problems, and these we are offering for the considera- tion and advice of our honorary endocrinologist, Dr Geikie Cobb. It seems highly probable that the solution of these problems is connected with the imbalance of the secretions of the ductless glands.
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